Jennifer Rabin
Masters Student, Clinical Psychology
jsrabin@yorku.ca

I am interested in investigated the neural basis of Theory of Mind (ToM), a uniquely human ability that allows us to infer the current mental states of other people. There is debate in the literature regarding the regions necessary for ToM and whether the same regions are recruited for other abilities that rely on mental state attributions such as self-related processing when recalling past personal episodes (i.e., autobiographical memory; Buckner & Carroll, 2007). My masters thesis aims to help clarify these issues using a unique real-world 'family-photo test' of mental state attributions developed by Gilboa and colleagues (2004). Participants will be scanned with fMRI as they view past photos of themselves ('autobiographical memory' condition) and of strangers engaging in distinct events ('ToM' condition). They will be asked to infer what the people in each photo were thinking and feeling at the time.

Eventually, we plan to carry out this research with patients who have focal lesions to brain areas within the frontal and temporal lobes, areas implicated in ToM. This innovate approach of combining fMRI and lesion methods will allow us to determine how the brain reorganizes itself following insult.

 

 

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